


The Law of Names

by Sixthlight



Series: A Few Years Later [10]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Gen, Peter/Nightingale by implication, Post-Canon, Spoilers for Foxglove Summer, alternate canon PoV, but not if you'd rather ignore it, the wizarding grapevine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 04:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5695597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harold was not himself a wizard or anything like, but by virtue of his position as the Folly’s archivist he found himself the centre of what Thomas liked to call the wizarding grapevine. [Or: how Peter became a starling.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Law of Names

**Author's Note:**

> Started from these two [Tumblr](http://sixth-light.tumblr.com/post/120707413299/the-high-meggas-sixth-light) [threads](http://elodieunderglass.tumblr.com/post/124558208103/sixth-light-aashyma-bibliotheksbewohnerin) speculating how, exactly, the wizarding grapevine came up with that nickname for Peter, whether Harold Postmartin had anything to do with it, and whether Nightingale complain-boasts about Peter to Postmartin on the phone. 
> 
> I’m adding this to the Good Grammar ‘verse stories because of a couple of references, but you don’t need to have read any of the others for this to make sense. Any Peter/Nightingale is hence between you and your slash goggles, although I wrote it with mine on.

Once Harold put aside the fact that Thomas had unaccountably failed to mention his new apprentice was coloured – not that it _mattered_ , but it had been rather unexpected – he had to admit to being quite impressed by Peter Grant. He was somewhat under-educated, but you couldn’t fault his intelligence; he wasn’t just accepting of but openly enthusiastic about the existence of magic; and he knew when to leave things unspoken. Given all the chaos that had ensued since he’d begun his apprenticeship – Thomas nearly getting killed, people with their faces falling off, it all made Harold glad he lived in Oxford, where the murder rate was ninety percent fictional – Grant was handling things with remarkable aplomb. Tough and clever, Thomas had said that was what he’d need in an apprentice, if he took one, which he’d sworn then he had no intention of doing; but, now Harold thought on it, that had been fifteen years ago, perhaps a little more. Time enough to change his mind. And Grant met his criteria, certainly.

Of course, you’d never know it from the way Thomas talked about him – at least, not if you weren’t well-acquainted with Thomas. In Harold’s considered opinion, half the problem was that Thomas had never been a teacher of any sort, and was finding his way almost as much as Grant was.

He’d first heard about it in March, just after Grant had managed his first spell; _finally_ managed, was how Thomas had put it.

“I suppose it’s not that long, considering,” he’d said, “but it turns out it's not just the magic I've got to teach him; I didn’t realise they’d stopped teaching Latin altogether in comprehensives. At least he seems genuinely interested.”

Harold had gathered from this description that the boy was keen as mustard and not afraid of hard work, since he was willing to take on learning the classical languages as _well_ as magic. And his work as a police constable on top of it; really, Thomas should consider himself lucky Grant hadn't backed out already. Of course there was the oath, but Thomas wouldn't have kept him if he really didn't want to be there. 

Thomas presented almost exactly the same complaints six months later, when he gained another apprentice - this time unexpectedly.

“She taught _herself_ , more or less,” he said. “Not Latin, that might have been helpful, but _lux_ , which really Peter shouldn’t have shown her at all – I had the devil of a time getting her past the Commissioner, and now I’ve got two of them to teach and not at the same stage, either. And it really wasn’t safe for her; Abdul is worried about the damage to her brain, from the Punch incident. Peter didn’t warn her about the daily limits on practice. But she’s here now, so I suppose we must make the most of it.”

How Peter had been supposed to warn her when the girl hadn’t informed either him or Thomas that she was attempting to learn magic for herself Harold didn’t know, but it didn’t seem like Thomas would be receptive to this comment.

“You are quite sure she figured it out on her own?” he asked. “Peter wasn’t going behind your back?”

“Oh, no, I’m sure,” Thomas said. “He hasn’t had the time, with…everything, this past month. He’s not been specific, but I know he was spending a lot of time with that…with Simone Fitzwilliam, besides all the work he had to be doing, with me still mostly stuck in that damned chair. I – you know, Harold, it does make it simpler, what she and her…sisters…did, but – the whole thing was a mess from start to finish, and if I hadn’t been – anyway, no point worrying about it now.”

“Indeed.” Harold hardly liked to think of it; he had seemed such a nice young man, Peter Grant, when Harold had met him, and to first be enthralled by a – a _jazz vampire_ , or whatever she’d been – and then have her kill herself; one could only hope it _had_ been enthrallment of some sort, and not genuine feeling on Peter’s part. But perhaps the prospect of his friend joining him in apprenticeship would cheer him up. “And then this Faceless Man. I feel quite responsible, Thomas, that they apparently had this club at Oxford, someone trained up to mastery and I didn’t notice a thing.”

“Hardly,” Thomas said. “They meant to avoid notice, and you’re quite a public part of our organisation, as these things go.”

“On the other hand," Harold couldn't help musing, "Peter survived. So perhaps your man’s not as well-trained as all that; I can’t imagine if he were up to _your_ standard that Peter would have had much chance.”

“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “Peter – he’s barely started with his training, true, but…it’s not all about power, and the way he describes it I think this man simply underestimated him. He thought Peter was associated with Mama Thames and her daughters, or from overseas, he had no idea Peter was an apprentice. That would have earned him some breathing space, enough to – well, enough to not die. And…chimeras, Harold, and all the rest of it. The man’s a master, I’ve no doubt.”

Harold would have rubbed his forehead, if he hadn't had the phone in one hand and a teacup in the other. “A problem.”

“A judgement, perhaps.” Thomas was quiet a second. “I sat here all those years and let this go on. You say you should have noticed something – I should have, too. Well, now it’s my problem to fix.”

“A new apprentice is most timely, then,” Harold suggested. “Reinforcements, and all that.”

“Yes.” Thomas sounded pleased by this thought, which was all to the good. “Yes – and all that. I think Lesley might catch up quickly; Alexander Seawoll hand-picked her out of probation, she could have gone anywhere she liked. If she puts her mind to this, she’ll do well.”

“Good,” Harold said. “That really is very good to hear.”

*

Harold came down to London for a conference in November and had a chat to Peter – Lesley was apparently in hospital for another operation (“Just an outpatient thing,” Peter said, “she’ll be home this evening.”) so he didn’t have the pleasure of making her acquaintance. He did get the opportunity to ask Peter how things were going, from Peter’s viewpoint; he had Thomas’s reports, of course, and their occasional phone calls, but one had to put in so much effort to sieve the truth out of Thomas’s reserve that it was occasionally exhausting. And Peter hadn’t gotten in touch outside the necessary, despite Harold’s little chat with him back in September.

“How’s it all going?” he asked. “Your training, especially.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Oh, you know. I think it’s coming along all right, but I don’t think I’m impressing Nightingale. Sometimes it seems like he’s more interested in teaching me Latin than magic.”

“You really can’t have one without the other, I’m afraid,” Harold told him. “Not that I’m a practitioner, but I do have some familiarity with the literature, and that -”

“- is in Latin, I know,” Peter said. “Sometimes I go into the magic library here just to remind myself about all the books I can’t read yet. At least now Lesley’s here I’m not the _most_ Latin-illiterate person in the place. Assuming Molly reads it, of course. _Does_ she?”

“I actually have no idea.” Harold considered this. “Are you getting much chance for any of those experiments you wanted to do, or is it all Latin and _formae_?”

“Nightingale’s been complaining about them?” Peter asked, but he didn’t sound entirely displeased. “It’s more theory than practice right now, but mostly I want to figure out what’s going on with _vestigia_. There has to be a _reason_ it collects in some things and not others.”

*

After he got the report on the Gallagher murder, with all the associated to-do – FBI Agents and secret tribes living under Notting Hill, oh my – Harold couldn’t resist calling Thomas to prod him for the unwritten details, but had to settle for leaving a message with Molly, or at least a message into eerie silence that would make its way to Thomas eventually. He was most surprised to have the call returned from a number he didn’t recognise.

“Peter got me a mobile phone for Christmas,” Thomas said. “He even saved all the numbers I needed into it, so I don’t have to carry around my address book just to use it. Really very thoughtful of him. Though I don’t plan to be reachable at any hour of day or night, which is what people seem to expect sometimes. That’s what I’ve got an apprentice _for._ ”

“Very thoughtful,” Harold agreed, though most likely Peter had been hoping Thomas _would_ make himself findable whenever Peter needed him. “I hope you remembered to get him something.”

“A proper watch.” Thomas sounded most pleased with himself. “That won’t die just because Peter’s doing a little magic – all the modern ones seem to involve electronics – and waterproof, since I have no confidence at all in his ability to stay out of rivers for more than a month or two at a time. He nearly gave himself hypothermia back in October. Perhaps a little pragmatic for a Christmas gift, but I think he liked it.”

“Well, that’s always gratifying, isn’t it,” Harold said, and wondered what the grapevine would think of it; to Harold’s mind a watch was a rather personal gift, being the next best thing to jewellery. 

Harold was not himself a wizard or anything like, having missed out on attending Casterbrook by a matter of a year or two when all his potential future teachers had been mown down at Ettersberg, but by virtue of his position as the Folly’s archivist he found himself the centre of what Thomas sometimes called the wizarding grapevine. Even so long after the War there were a surprising number of surviving ex-wizards, and all of them eager for any titbit of gossip about Thomas and his doings they could get. Thomas was not much for general gossip and had a depressing habit of only meeting up with his former colleagues at funerals, so instead they darkened Harold’s door, or more often his telephone. Since Thomas had taken Peter on at the beginning of the year the gossip had gotten _much_ livelier; Harold wondered if Peter had any idea what a topic of discussion he was in those circles. Probably not. And probably for the best; the general opinion was of course that Thomas knew what he was doing, and Harold passed on what Thomas _actually_ thought of Peter’s progress, rather than Thomas’s _words_ , but there were always a few sceptics. Peter had enough on his shoulders without knowing he had an audience for his various exploits.

Harold felt comfortable passing on the public details of the Gallagher case, and a few of the less public ones – these Quiet People, now, undiscovered by _any_ wizard before, that really was something – but left out the exchange of Christmas presents, despite the interest it would have generated. No, _because_ of it, because Thomas and his apprentice deserved better than to have their retired colleagues coming to any sort of unfortunate conclusions. Thomas had been quite clear that Peter, aside from the Fitzwilliam girl, had his eye on one of Mother Thames’ daughters, which did make a great deal of sense; although apparently she was the one who’d gone upstream as part of the hostage exchange. Now _that_ might well cause some consternation once it became known, but Harold was saving that for when the girl – goddess – well, both, really – returned to London and he could say whether anything was going to come of it. 

There was so _much_ for the grapevine to gossip about lately, after all. It was only reasonable to parcel it out. They were all getting on, and Harold wouldn’t want to be responsible for speeding any of them along their way to the grave by way of shock.

*

Peter drove out to Oxford in May to pick up a book or two Thomas had requested from the Bodleian stacks; at least, that was the pretext. Harold had actually asked Thomas to drop by, wanting to ascertain how he was taking it, one of his apprentices defecting like that, but Peter said that he’d had to come in his stead.

“It’s Varvara Tamonina,” he said. “We can’t leave her alone with Molly – well, I’d put money on Molly in that fight, but the building might not survive.”

Peter looked terrible, Harold thought, circles under his eyes, although he breezed off Harold’s questions quite as handily as Thomas might have.

“We’re getting on with it. The DPS are hauling us in to apply the thumbscrews about three times a week still, but there’s no way Nightingale’s going to let that interfere with lessons or practice or any of it, so no summer holidays for _me_ this year.”

“Goodness, I can’t imagine what they think you have left to tell them after this long.”

Peter shrugged. “If _I_ was them, I’d be hauling me in, too. Lesley was – Lesley and me were mates, I’m the one who got her mixed up in the Punch case, I’m the one who showed her magic, I’m the only person who’s ever seen the Faceless Man face to, hah, beige wrestling mask – they wouldn’t be proper coppers if they weren’t suspicious, and the DPS have to be twice as suspicious as the rest of us.”

Harold didn’t bother to play down his lack of appreciation for _that_ theory. It wasn’t anything in Peter’s nature, not that he’d seen. “ _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes_ , I suppose, but one would think they’d realise the obvious a touch more quickly.”

“That I’m just an idiot, not complicit?” Peter’s smile was thin. “Yeah, not too hard to see, is it.”

“Lesley,” Harold said, “seemed like – a most competent young woman, and you had no reason to suspect her. That doesn’t make you an idiot, it makes -” _it makes you betrayed_ , he wanted to say, but bit the word back as too honest. “It says much more about her than you.”

“Zach Palmer asked me if I thought she was undercover,” Peter said abruptly. “Some sort of double-agent thing, trying to help us out by getting in with him.” No need to ask who _him_ was.

“Is that a possibility?”

Thomas didn’t think it was, or – he thought it a symptom of his own wishful thinking, not a genuine line of inquiry, but either way Harold was quite sure he hadn’t voiced any part of that thought to Peter. It wouldn’t be helpful.

Peter fidgeted for a second. “No,” he said finally. “No, because that’d be easy, wouldn’t it? But – no.”

Harold himself didn’t know what to think. He’d only met Lesley the once, but even that brief encounter had spoken of a girl much more driven than Peter ever appeared to be, though with that mask, it had been hard to tell what she’d been thinking. She’d been brief with him, certainly not prone to Peter’s questioning. Harold felt he knew Peter almost as much through Thomas’s praise of him, disguised as complaints, as through the times they’d actually met. Lesley – Thomas had spoken much less often of Lesley, the months she’d been an apprentice. Did Thomas still consider her such? His responsibility, certainly, but assaulting your colleague in aid of your suspect constituted a clear abandonment of your post, in Harold’s opinion.

Either way, before that fateful day, Thomas had been much quieter on the topic of Lesley’s progress than Peter’s, though he’d said she was doing well, working hard. Thomas wasn’t at all the type to play favourites, but his silence spoke as much as his words. Harold had to wonder if that had played a role in her…defection. It was always more difficult, with female students, Harold had some personal experience of that – one never knew quite what they were thinking at the best of times, women. And Thomas, as far as Harold was aware, had no experience with them at all, unless you counted whatever Molly was; he didn’t mean to insinuate even in the privacy of his own head, but Thomas had spent his life in institutions only lately breached by the fairer sex.

Another thing he’d missed, though; another loss. Harold wondered how many more Thomas was going to have to bear, if he kept on for – well. However long magic could, improbably, sustain him.

It was only to be hoped that Peter would stay the course, perhaps cut back on the confrontations with dangerous magicians, though Harold had known Peter long enough now to find the latter unlikely. The alternative – the alternative hardly bore thinking of.

*

The wizarding grapevine operated mostly via the telephone and even the odd letter, Harold having failed to persuade most of them of the advantages of email, let alone Twitter, but today the gossip was taking place in person and in Harold’s office at that. Hugh Oswald was here, visiting from Herefordshire, and a couple of other hedge wizards who lived in Oxfordshire and had retired from the university some years before, as well as magic many years before that. Perhaps it was having three of them in a room together that prompted the discussion of nicknames; Harold was never quite sure. He certainly wasn’t admitting culpability.

“We really must think of something better to call him than ‘this Grant lad’, you know,” said Alan, who’d been a linguist. “The first apprentice in seventy years – or thereabouts – and the _Nightingale’s_ apprentice, as well; he deserves it.”

“Is there anything wrong with ‘Nightingale’s apprentice?” Since he only had the one again, Harold did _not_ say, but then the grapevine, as a group, had always been more dubious of Lesley May. Their folly.

“It lacks a certain something,” Alan said. “He’s a London boy, do I have that right?”

“Born within the sound of the Bow bells, apparently.” There’d been a scene at the Goddess of the River’s court last spring, according to Thomas, while Thomas himself had been laid low in hospital and Peter locked out of the Folly; Thomas had practically been smug when he’d recounted it.

Alan hmmed. “Well, it has to be a bird, of course…he’s bright, isn’t he, Thomas’s apprentice.”

“Very clever,” Harold confirmed. “One might even say cunning, in the older sense of the word. Then again, Thomas did say that tough and clever was what he’d need in an apprentice, if he ever got one, so it’s not really a surprise.”

“Starling,” croaked Richard, the oldest of all of them there. “City birds. Too smart for their own good.”

Hugh finally spoke up. “He’d better be, if he’s going to be a policeman _and_ learn to be a wizard. No time for the slow.”

“Yes,” said Harold. “Nightingale’s starling. It has a ring, certainly.” He realised the double meaning almost as soon as he’d said it, but it was too late; everybody laughed.

“That’ll do,” said Alan, a genial twinkle in his eye. “Nightingale’s starling. Maybe he’ll fly out my way, one of these days, and I can get a good look at him.”

Names weren't as powerful in real magic as in fictional, as far as Harold was aware - none of this You-Know-Who business, although this Faceless Man skirted eerily close - but it somehow seemed fitting for Peter to have that sort of nickname; the first apprentice in seventy years, as Alan had said. And one who might live up to Thomas's legacy, Harold thought privately, not that Thomas seemed likely to leave them any time soon but presumably he wouldn't live  _forever_. Presumably. 

“I’m afraid there seems to be quite enough to occupy Peter in London, the way things are going,” Harold said ruefully. “But perhaps.”

Which meant of course that the very next month Thomas called and said he was packing Peter off to Herefordshire. “Just for a day or two, to help clear his head – it’s been very hard on him, since Skygarden, and perhaps then he’ll have some concentration to spare for his lessons.”

“You don’t _actually_ think Hugh Oswald has anything to do with those children disappearing,” Harold said.

Thomas snorted. “Well, it doesn’t seem likely. But he needs to start meeting some of the old lot before – while there’s time for it, and we’ve nothing on our plate right now, since the DPS have finally decided they’ve wrung all they can out of us and that thing with the cars has been put to bed. Although it also prompted Peter to come up with a way to use _lux_ to disable them; I really need to find more for him to do if he has time to play around like that.” That was the tone he always took when Peter innovated, but the lack of qualifiers meant he thought this idea was genuinely useful. 

“I haven’t got that report yet. Why would he need to disable cars?” Harold said, and they got off the topic of Peter; but Harold remembered the concern in Thomas’s voice, disguised with exasperation, and remembered he still wasn’t sure how _Thomas_ was dealing with it – all of it.

Thomas called again a few days later, which was not in the normal way of things.

“I thought you’d like to know,” he said. “I’ve got to go out to Herefordshire – Peter really has waded into it this time, and he’s only got Beverley to back him up. I think it’ll be all right, but I’m not quite sure what we’re dealing with, and – well, just so you’re forewarned.”

“Beverley?”

“Brook.” Thomas sounded distracted. “She and Peter are – friends, if not more, and I thought she could be relied on to keep an eye on him.”

“Deputising river goddesses,” Harold said. “My, my, Thomas, a few people are going to have something to say about that.”

“I don’t care what they have to say about it.” There was an unaccustomed snap to Thomas’s tone. “I’m making do with what I have, and I believe she’s trustworthy.”

“I didn’t at all mean to imply she wasn’t,” Harold protested. “It’s just – your apprentice’s knack for community policing seems to be wearing off on you.”

“Do you think so?” Thomas was trying very hard to sound displeased and manifestly failing. “I suppose it can’t be helped.”

The grapevine _did_ have something to say about it, afterwards, but Harold rather enjoyed frowning them down; personally, he thought it showed a pleasing ability to adapt that he hadn’t been quite sure Thomas possessed. The times were, after all, changing. 

*

“I seem to have picked up a nickname,” Peter said, when Harold next came to the Folly for tea and gossip, not that anybody would put it that way. Information exchange, that sounded much better. “Hugh Oswald said it. Nightingale’s starling. Any idea where that started?”

Thomas rolled his eyes, but discreetly, and out of Peter’s line of sight.

“Oh, I couldn’t say exactly,” Harold hedged. “But I’ve heard it among the ex-wizarding set, now and again; it’s not just Oswald.”

“Huh,” Peter said.

“There are still plenty of hedge wizards around, even now, and most of them are well retired and don’t have much to do,” said Thomas, with a touch of aspersion; Harold had noticed he didn’t much like being called _the_ Nightingale, at least by his former colleagues. “I’m sure it amused them to come up with it.”

“Their little joke,” said Peter. His expression was good-humoured but his eyebrow twitched briefly in a way that said otherwise, though Harold wasn’t quite sure why. Young people were very hard to read, these days. They got wound up about the oddest things. 

“Not a joke you’re meant to be the butt of, I’m quite sure,” he said. At this point he wouldn’t have confessed his own role in the whole thing even if Thomas had put the question to him direct, let alone Peter.

“It’s politeness, of an odd sort,” Thomas said thoughtfully. “Names have power.”

“What are we talking?” Peter asked, almost before Thomas had finished speaking. “Literal, magical power? The power of not making someone mad at you?”

“Yes.”

Peter’s sigh bordered on insubordination, frankly, but it merely made Thomas smile a little.

“All right, all right," Peter said, "I’m sure you’re going to recommend me some reading on the topic.”

“Not unless your Greek’s undergone a dramatic improvement recently,” Thomas said. Peter’s hand twitched towards the pocket Harold had seen him slip his notebook into, but he refrained from note-taking then and there; Thomas had told Harold all about the compromise they’d come to, on Peter’s questions.

“I’m going to run out of things to teach him _long_ before he runs out of questions,” Thomas had said, in a rare moment of honesty, “but for God’s sake don’t let him know that. I struggle to keep ahead on some fronts as it is.”

“Greek, hmm?” Harold asked. “How are you liking that?”

“About as bad as Latin, but without the benefit of an alphabet I know how to read.” Peter gave a rueful grin. “But the _Iliad_ ’s all right – the bits I can translate, anyway. Broad shields and elaborate metaphors and all.”

The phrasing tickled something in Harold’s memory, but it had been far too many years since his own classical education for him to say quite what.

“They were very fond of their metaphor, the Grecian poets,” he said instead.

*

Harold thought Peter rather disdained his new nomenclature, but he was most surprised, sometime later, to hear Peter introduce himself that way. He’d come by the Bodleian when Harold had one of Thomas’s former colleagues visiting his office, Gerald Jamison, who’d been barely eighteen at Ettersberg and, deprived of the use of his legs, taken up academia as an alternative to – Harold wasn’t quite sure what, but he still talked wistfully about riding, seventy years later. His eyesight was still unreasonably good, however, and he gave Peter a keen look. Harold thought of all the things Hugh had said, after Peter’s visit to Herefordshire.

“Peter Grant,” said Peter when he shook Gerald’s hand. “Nightingale’s starling.”

“I had thought,” Harold said afterwards, “that name wasn’t to your taste.”

“Oh,” said Peter. “No, it’s Nightingale who doesn’t like it that much; I think he thinks it gives me ideas. I thought it was a bit neat, getting a nickname of my own. Kind of like a superhero thing. Which is exactly _why_ he doesn’t like it. He’s very down on me getting too impressed with myself. Pride leads to the Dark Side, or something, I think is what he’s going for.”

Harold laughed. “I can see that. No harm to it, then.”

“We-ell.” Peter cocked his head. “I don’t _entirely_ appreciate the pun, but you can’t have everything.”

“I can’t imagine what you mean,” Harold said, in his most puzzled-old-man voice.

Peter shot him a look he’d obviously picked up off Thomas – dry as dust and twice as speaking as words. “Never mind, then.”

Said it all, really.

*

Thomas came to Gerald’s funeral, later that year, but Peter didn’t; some ongoing case, Harold gathered. They went to the pub afterwards, so Thomas could stop pretending to be his own grandson.

“I am,” Thomas said, “so dreadfully tired of these.”

“Cheer up,” Harold told him. “They’ll stop eventually.”

Thomas gave him a look. “Yes – _such_ a cheering thought. I’ll be the last wizard in Britain in fact as well as name soon enough, and Peter’s still mucking around with fifth-order spells when he’s not busying himself coming up with questions I don’t know the answers to and – and jumping off high buildings. Not to mention Abigail chasing hard on his heels.”

“He’s rather ahead of where you thought he’d be by now, then. Surely that’s cheering.”

Thomas was frowning. “Well – oh, fine, it is. And -”

“- I’m not to tell him so, I quite understand. I hope you do accord him _some_ praise, now and again.”

“Now and again,” Thomas allowed, taking a swallow of beer. “He’s far too clever for his own good, my starling.”

Harold was not too proud to admit he choked on his own pint at that, and Thomas’s expression said he knew why.

“Are you sure you’re all right to drive back to London?” Harold was forced to ask.

Thomas lifted his glass. “This is the first and only drink I’m having, Harold, I’m being _maudlin_ , not drunk.”

“Ah, quite.” Harold fished desperately for a change of topic. “How, ah, how are you liking the brave new world of electronic mail? Molly told me you’ve finally been forced to succumb.” The latest and best addition to the grapevine; she was quite the correspondent, all the words she didn’t say in person spilling out in print. Harold found it fascinating.

“Really, Harold,” Thomas said. “It’s been called email for the last twenty years. Even _I_ know that.”

As long as they weren’t talking about the way Thomas had said _my starling_ , that one unguarded moment, Harold was prepared to put up with any amount of uncharacteristic sarcasm. It wasn’t for his benefit, after all.

*

The question of nicknames didn’t arise again until Peter showed up at the Bodleian with two of the new apprentices, some years later still. Perhaps more than a decade since he’d joined the Folly, in fact, if Harold counted, although it hardly seemed possible. _Peter_ was the new apprentice, after all.

By this stage Harold was three-quarters retired, if not a little more, so there wasn’t much need for Peter to make the introductions. But he did appreciate it all the same. Abigail had been floating around the Folly for years by the time Thomas had finally found an official spot for her, of course, but the other three were genuine newcomers to the strange little world of magical policing. Harold had done the usual poking around online that one could do these days, and they knew how to present a creditable appearance there, at least, which was more than he could say for some people. The most interesting things he’d found out were that Constable Choudhury was of the Sapphic persuasion and Constable Blake was prone to a certain laxity of grammar, although perhaps that was his being Welsh.

“Ah, you’ve brought two of the flock,” Harold said when Peter knocked on the door of his office; trailing him were a short blond woman who must be Annie Sterling, and the aforementioned Blake, identifiable both by the photo on his Facebook account and his gender. Harold could only imagine what the grapevine would have had to say about the number of women in the Folly these days, but as they were almost all resting in peace they were blessedly silent on the topic.  

“Flock?” asked Sterling, looking to Peter. Blake gave a frown, but smoothed it out almost instantly.

“Please don’t tell me this is another bird metaphor,” Peter said. “What is it this time?”

“Nothing more than that,” Harold assured him.  “Constable Sterling and Constable Blake, I take it.”

They were duly gratified to be recognised, although it wasn’t technically a first meeting; Harold had conversed with them on Twitter, or tweeted, or whatever you were supposed to call it. Then they got on to the main reason for Peter’s visit: a book Harold had dug up in the Bodleian’s regular collection that really belonged to the Folly’s special one. Its contents suggested that might not have been entirely an accident, but at this stage it was impossible to know whether the Little Crocodiles and Wheatcroft were at fault, or the vagaries of time and shelving.

Peter was very pleased. It had to do with architecture, which had, Harold had noted over the years, a special place in Peter’s heart, right next to magical experiments.

“While I’m at it,” Harold added before Peter got too absorbed, “How is -”

“Oh, Thomas is fine,” Peter said absently, his attention clearly on the book. “He’s done with the crutches and everything. Where’d you say you found this, again?”

Now that _was_ new, Peter using Thomas’s Christian name, but Harold resolved not to ask. It might be no more than long familiarity, and it wasn’t even a particularly interesting piece of speculation; if nothing else, all the people he’d known who would have gotten some amusement out of it were dead. That was the real bother about living as long as he had. Everyone else kept disappointing you by failing to keep up, Thomas being as always a law unto himself. The apprentices, in any case, didn’t seem to find it exceptionable.

“In the regular stacks,” he said instead of anything else. “A mis-filing, I think; whether intentional or not is difficult to tell at this late date. But in any case -”

*

They went to lunch afterwards, the _Eagle and Child_ as usual, and the apprentices were sent to procure drinks.

“So tell me. How are they getting on?” Harold asked, once they were out of earshot.

“Not badly.” Peter shook his head. “But a lot of the complaining Thomas did is suddenly making more sense. And that was just what he said to me. I bet you heard a lot more of it.”

“Not as much as you might think,” said Harold. “He’s quite fond of you, you know. His starling.”

What was the use of being old and mostly retired, really, if you couldn’t use it as an excuse to just say what you thought. Especially, Harold considered, the bleeding obvious.

"Yeah," was all Peter said. "It does come through. On occasion." 

“Good,” said Harold. “Good.”


End file.
